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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Simon Minty (pictured) defies convention in all kinds of ways. Best known perhaps as the cofounder of the comedy troupe Abnormally Funny People
(AFP), a collective of mainly disabled comics and actors that's been
around in various guises for almost a decade, he is also a former high
street banker, an entrepreneur and a disability consultant. And he is charting new territory once again with the launch of a comedy podcast.

Featuring
disabled actors, comics "and generally interesting people" as guests,
the AFP podcast, he says, is not trying to change people's beliefs.
"This is first and foremost comedy. I want lots of disabled people to
listen to it, but I also want it to be accessible to everybody so that
people think, 'You know what? This is a different, quirky thing.' The
hope is the podcast might be another step towards ensuring more disabled
actors and comedians are in the mainstream of entertainment."

After two experimental runs, the inaugural podcast, Girls Just Wanna, is out this week. With guests actor Lisa Hammond and model and lawyer Shannon Murray, September's one-hour "discussion" touches on everything from being pointed at in the street to dating.

Minty,
46, sees humour as a powerful tool to relax people about an awkward
subject, and is determined that the podcast should not be pigeonholed as
"earnest" or "lecturey".

When asked if he ever dreamed he would
have so many strings to his career bow, and that one of them would be
comedy ("my evening job"), Minty says he used to be envious of a pal who
always seemed to go to bed late and get up late and thought: "How can I
work that out?"

Minty's funny bone is never far from the surface,
but that's not to say he doesn't do serious. For a start, he says that
grappling with issues such as discrimination and inclusion in a comedy
context can be illuminating. "We will talk on the podcast about the
Independent Living Fund, or about access to work. These are massive
things that are having a huge impact on disabled people. Assisted
suicide is another topic.

Sometimes we throw in a random gag because we
can. Sometimes you need to prick the tension a bit.
"I think a
good chunk of disability comedy is taking the mickey out of people who
aren't disabled and how they behave. It's lovely, because the
non-disabled person says: 'Oh yeah, that is me, but they're not being
horrible to me'. So they laugh at their own behaviour, but they also
learn from it."

On wider disability rights and social justice,
Minty has achieved a substantial amount through his consultancy work
over the past couple of decades. He advised a number of large companies,
including banks, on how to implement requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act
after it was introduced in 1995. While he doesn't describe himself as
an activist, he is close to many campaigners and is vocal on a range
of issues.

"It disappoints me hugely that the act has been in
place for coming up to 20 years, yet the unemployment rate for disabled
people has remained pretty level," he says. "That really devastates me.
As for the whole idea of 'disablism', people don't even know what that
means – it's like a made up word for them. It's going to take another 10
years before they even get the concept."

Referring specifically
to disabled people in the workplace, he adds: "There are little moments
15 years later where I see companies slipping back a little, and I just
think: 'Did we really make an impact?' And then there are other areas
where we've come on in leaps and bounds."

Minty speaks admiringly
of the enthusiastic supporters within companies, as well as across media
and entertainment, who have helped drive progress alongside the
activists and advocates. All of this gives him cause for optimism. "Five
years ago, no one was talking about mental health in the workplace –
now everyone's talking about it. Learning disability was something else
that people didn't do, and now there's a huge amount of work on it."

He
says the portrayal of disability on screen has come a long way since he
was a boy and people of small stature were almost always depicted on TV
and in films in a negative or derogatory way that horrified him. "They
were dressed up as some freakish clown or an alien … or were the butt of
a very poor joke. It used to make me flinch." But even if things have
improved, he nevertheless cautions against complacency. "What you have
to be very careful of is that organisations will say: 'Oh, we're doing
our week of …' and that's it for the rest of the year."

He applauds recent moves by the BBC to introduce new "diversity targets"
throughout the organisation, including for disabled people. He was
consulted by the director general, Tony Hall, while the policy was being
drawn up. Asked if he worries about it being a potential box-ticking
exercise he says that, done well, it can constitute effective auditing.
"So long as it's lots of boxes and you do it regularly."

He would
like a version of the podcast to transfer to radio or TV, but the bigger
picture is never far from his mind. "What I sometimes wonder about
media and other organisations is that they say: 'Oh, we can't do that –
we're worried about tokenism', and I say: 'Yeah, but that means you
won't do anything!' Sometimes you just need to force it."

About Me

I am full-time Mass Communication faculty at Towson University in Maryland and adjunct faculty in the City University of New York (CUNY) Master's in Disability Studies program.
I research media and disability issues and wrote a 2010 book on the subject: Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media, published by Advocado Press.
The media have real power to define what the public knows about disability and that's what I research.